"But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma. "
Posted on 09/13/2007 1:22:15 PM PDT by DesScorp
In one of his New York Times columns earlier this year, David Brooks lamented that “Despite all the incentives, 30 percent of kids drop out of high school and the college graduation rate has been flat for a generation.” Brooks, like many spokesmen for the higher-education establishment, worries that the United States is falling behind in the international race for brainpower.
That is why we keep hearing politicians talk about the need to stimulate a higher rate of college attendance and completion. We’re in a global “knowledge economy,” and whereas America used to be tops in the percentage of workers with college degrees, we have now fallen behind a number of other nations. At a big education conference I attended back in February, former North Carolina governor Jim Hunt called this situation “scary.”
Sorry, scaremongers, but there is nothing to worry about. If anything, America now puts too many students into college, and we certainly don’t need any new subsidies to get more there.
Here are my reasons for holding that contrarian view...
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Best point, in an article that included several.
As a college professor who has seen first hand what passes for education at several major universities, I would have to agree.
"But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma. "
I’ve been saying that for a long time, and often get accused of being elitist because of my opinion. But unless you are going to college for the life experience and for the sake of the education, the return on the investment these days is minimal without a technical degree or specialized MS degree. My niece is paying $30,000 per year at a private school so she can be a teacher, but also says she wants to stay at home after she has kids. How long will it take at a teacher’s salary to recoup that investment (or repay the loans?) compared to if she had just worked as a waitress making $15 per hour in tips. That’s like $30000 per year, and you can do that right out of high school. Even if she could make $60000 per year teaching, it’ll take 8 years to break even. She probably won’t even work that long.
We need thousands of kids going to the “Holmes on Homes” school of carpentry.
The biggest problem is that we’re throwing money for “college” at millions of kids who aren’t interesting in anything but partying and sex. We spend money on them, “help” them go into debt to get an “education”, all at a time in their lives when it’s completely wasted. Then 10-15-20 years down the road, when they realize how badly they need a real education, the money’s been spent, so nobody’s throwing it at them anymore. Parents, college-based financial aid programs, and government programs should all drastically cut back on the number of kids who are funded for college just because they’ve graduated from high school.
While I’m ranting, colleges that require students to be “making satispfactory progress toward a degree” in order to register for courses during the regular registration period (i.e. before all the worthwhile classes are full) should be ineligible for any government aid programs. The laundry list of distribution requirements, most of which are there to promote more jobs for faculty in fluffy fields and to promote leftist thinking, greatly add to the cost, opportunity cost, and time needed to get a real education. No student should be told they aren’t eligible for taxpayer-funded financial aid because they have enough credits for junior standing but still haven’t fulfilled their “social justice requirement” or similar BS. If a student prefers to spend his/her time taking courses in math, accounting, computer science, physical sciences, etc., and cut out the fluff, the government shouldn’t be interfering with that.
Government entities should also abolish all requirements for “degrees” for particular jobs. We need people with particular skills and knowledge, and with professional licenses acquired by passing examinations to prove particular skills and knowledge, etc. The requirement of a “degree” in order to get a job is just one more way that taxpayers are forced to fund the huge empire of leftist college professors.
AMEN to that says this college professor!
Among many other educational reforms, I advocate several parallel systems of education in the US. One of these needs to be a “genius” system.
First off, such a school system would not be a place to go for a good education. It would have a very narrow and limited focus for students who were profoundly brilliant in a single subject. They would have almost unlimited assets with which to study just their one area of expertise. Other subjects would only be available to a basic level, unless the student wished to study them on his free time.
Each student would be tutored by two or more graduate student experts in the field, and with rapid access to both professors and corporate experts for any questions or ideas the student wished to examine. Part of their residency would be the protection of any intellectual assets they developed. Like an instant patent.
Instead of graduation, students would have either the prospect of returning to a “good” school for a more liberal, as in general, education, if they just couldn’t cut being a genius. This would be if they were expert and important in their field, but not brilliant; alternatively, they would become part of our national research and development system, private or public.
This is because at that skill level a diploma is meaningless—your genius speaks for itself.
A good example of this was the young man some years ago, the son of a National Security Agency head, who intentionally or inadvertently put a computer virus on the Internet. His brilliance was such that even if he had been tried and convicted of a serious felony for doing so, the only sentence he could have been given would be to do the same work for the NSA that he was going to be doing anyway.
That is, his brilliance had set his future in concrete. His talent was too important to be put in prison, or allowed to go free. He truly had a destiny.
And that is really the destiny of genius. Their nation requires this of them. What they do nobody else can do, so any other track for them costs us all.
Well, except she wants to be a teacher and not a waitress, at least in the brief time before she quits to have babies—although both teaching and waitressing are good jobs to return to when the kids are older! The real problem was picking the $30K private college when there are excellent public colleges in the U.S. that are much cheaper.
Lots of people want to be a teacher before they try it! If she worked as a waitress after graduation, she’d be more likely to meet a man who could afford to support a stay-at-home mom with a huge college debt. :-).
Women should not be poo-poo’d desiring a good education just because they do their family and this country a great service by staying home with children. Wise women raise wise members of the next generation.
We desperately need to restructure not only our higher-ed system but also K-12 in this country. They’ve become nothing but mills for collectivism and far too expensive job training.
“Wise women raise wise members of the next generation.”
And in the case of my family, the woman is the primary teacher of the children (Daddy handles the math, though), so yes, the value of education itself isn’t the question here.
Even engineers need psychology or philosophy, english composition, history and business courses. Without them they are just educated idiots unable to think or write.
If high schools were any good and taught those things, they wouldn’t be needed in college.
If we can’t get K-12 right, there is no hope for college.
K-4th are the most important years to lay a solid foundation. If that is not done, no amount of remediation in later years will totally make up its lack.
...and I’m sure the man who could afford to support a stay-at-home mom would want a wife who could conjure up more conversation than, “Would you like your dressing on the side?”
Let’s keep it real here. Education — a true, valid education combined with a solid moral compass is ABSOLUTELY vital to all our youth. It doesn’t all have to be at a university/college. It can come from trade schools, technical schools, and, yes, the home. Everyone needs to realize that education NEVER ends if you’re worth your salt. We have to train our children to read, write and figure sums and find out where to get the information they need. You can’t put the fire in their bellies to go after knowledge, but you can sure teach ‘em where to find it when their brains catch up with their bodies.
Last, but not least, we need to teach them that all honest work is honorable — whether your a plumber or a rocket scientist. All are necessary and vital. Equip them with the tools they’ll need to get where they need to go.
She didn’t poo-poo the idea that her niece not get a good education. She was stating the her niece could get a good education to be a teacher at a fraction of the price she was paying to attend the private school.
I agree 100% with everything else you said!
You overlook one very important aspect of college...learning to write.
The telephone is rapidily being abondoned in the manufacturing world for e mail. If you can’t write and write well......no promotion.
You can say what you want but if you haven’t learned to write at the college level your job selection is going to be poor.
thanks, bfl
A college degree is just a white collar union card.
BTTT!
As one of the harbingers of the Baby Boom I bought the story that "you can never get too much education and the more you get the more you can earn." Maybe. But mostly it was a bill of goods. My mechanic and my electrician now make more than I do.(cuz they did what I described in the first paragraph).
I think that a large part of university education can be commoditized, driving down the cost. Online courses with master professors, learning centers, and other innovative ideas should be used to provide customized education products and drive down costs. The research emphasis of major universities does not contribute much to undergraduate education except for those students who want to pursue research and advanced training.
From your lips to my kids' prospective dean of admissions. :-)
The goal of our home school is to have them half way through a double major (one technical one social) before they turn 18.
If I could do it over—I have a BA from the University of CA, an MA from Georgetown University—I’d do exactly the same but I’d go for a BS and MS, with the same liberal arts majors, instead. I should have taken just a little more math/science.
I’ve found BS/MS degrees are just more useful. I’ve recently been looking at a career change (I work for the federal gov’t at present) to the health field, and have discovered that I should have gotten a BS.
I didn’t mean to imply that it was only an economic decision, but I agree with the article, a lot of people feel pressured into going to college thinking that is the only way they will be successful. They may not knowing what they want to do, don’t enjoy the challenging courses, and end up with a degree they can’t do much with. And worse, then they have slopped up all the liberal garbage most universities feed them. That is obviously not what happened to you. It’s clear you thrived on the academic challenges, and as a Freeper, you resisted the dark side. And as a side note, I applaud your decision to be home with your kids.
That was an awesome rant, and I totally agree.
bookmakr
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.